


waited long enough

by Sholio



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-31
Updated: 2014-10-31
Packaged: 2018-02-23 10:40:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2544548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha is still trying to get herself together, but she can be a lifeline anyway. For my h/c bingo "runaways" square. This is a timestamp taking place sometime after <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/2316437">Written in Blood and Bone.</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	waited long enough

**Author's Note:**

> Trobadora asked for something with post- _Written in Blood and Bone_ Bucky and Natasha. In my head the relationship the three of them have in this 'verse is a sort of queerplatonic, codependent gen that's not particularly easy for any of _them_ to define either, but the original story was open-ended as to whether it was going in an gen or an OT3 direction, and this timestamp is equally vague, so you can continue to read it in your preferred shipping/nonshipping direction.

It's a little after 8 a.m. when Natasha gets a text from James. She's in a cafe in Brussels, watching a suspected Hydra mole have breakfast with his kids. It's not an assignment for anyone. She's just freelancing, and she hasn't figured out whether the person she feels like today is a person who would kill this man, or corner him in an alley for a swift and brutal (but nonfatal) discussion of alternatives to his current activities, or whether this day's Natasha is a person who would simply walk away.

James's text simply says, _Hi._ She does a quick mental calculation -- 8 a.m. in Belgium is 3 a.m. in New York. On the other hand, she's not sure if James is still in New York with Steve. All she knows is that he was living in Steve's apartment two weeks ago, when she was there, before the restlessness got under her skin and she had to go, do something else, be somewhere else.

She really wanted to stay that time. But her skin wasn't the right size or shape for it. 

Maybe someday it will be.

Today her hair is black and blade-straight, hanging to her shoulders beneath a wide-brimmed brown hat. Straight hair always makes her feel more austere, lacking the softer edge of hair that curls around her face. Straight-haired Natasha likes darker colors and prefers not to be the center of attention. Straight-haired Natasha might put on a designer evening dress and go to a party because she needed to for an assignment, but she probably wouldn't do it just because she wanted to.

Tony has made a running joke out of it: the way she changes her hair, her colors, her personal style, putting on and taking off personas as the mood moves her. Which is mildly ironic and very Tony, because she thinks that out of the people she knows who aren't in the spy business (the bare handful of them) he might be the only one who understands why she does it, and what it means that she does it.

Once, when she was younger, she thought she could find a skin that fit her, and never have to change again. The world doesn't work like that. Steve wants to know the "real" Natasha; he doesn't understand that he already does, and yet never really will. But then, neither does she.

And as for James Buchanan Barnes ... she still hasn't quite figured out what he thinks about her. Who he thinks she is. Who he wants her to be. Which is one of the things that makes him interesting. Usually she knows within minutes of meeting a person. The only person who's ever really been able to surprise her in that way is Nick Fury, and that's still too hard and sharp to think about, like a knife blade that's snapped off in her chest.

_Salut,_ she texts back to James, typing one-handed on her phone because there's a delicate white demitasse cup of coffee in her other hand. _Can't sleep?_

_Guess not,_ he texts back, and she imagines she can hear his wry tone in the letters on her phone's little screen. 

_Bored?_

_Little bit._

Which is almost certainly James-speak for "really not okay". She wonders if he knows that. _You could wake Steve up,_ she points out.

_Steve's not here._

Ah, not at the apartment, then. Her phone could retrieve his GPS location if she asked for it. She thinks about it. Decides not to. With most of the others -- Steve, Tony, even Clint -- she'd have no compunctions about doing it. With James ... she tries to let him volunteer information as much as possible. Maybe this is what passes for trust with them.

_Have some coffee then,_ she types. _I am. We can have coffee together._

It takes him a while to respond. Natasha drinks her coffee and watches her target laughing with his kids. Golden in the morning sunshine, they look like a movie family, happy and wholesome.

In the sleek black leather handbag resting on the chair beside her leg, there's a loaded Ruger LCR and there's also a cyanide injector disguised as a ballpoint pen. 

_Got coffee,_ James reports.

_Good for you. I hope you're enjoying it._

_Not really. Made it myself._

She smiles involuntarily. Not anything calculated. There is no one looking at her and nothing to be gained or lost by it. Just a smile, because the sun is warm on her shoulders and chatting with James makes her happy.

_I'll buy you a cup of decent coffee next time I'm in town,_ she types.

_Not gonna ask when that'll be,_ the reply comes back across the miles. _You should call Steve though. He worries._

Now it's her turn to pause, thumb hovering over the phone's tiny keyboard. Finally she types, _How about you? Called him yet?_

_Touché._

Natasha leans her elbow on the table, cat-lazy in the sun. She cups the phone in her hand. With her palm turned up like that, she can see the faintest traces of fading ink on the soft skin on the inside of her wrist. She's not quite sure how she managed to get suckered into Steve and James's half-playful, half-serious skin-writing game, but she'd drawn the line at actual _words,_ so Steve had sketched on her instead. There had been a tiny cartoon version of herself on her wrist, with a little gun. On her other wrist had been a small cartoon James with a tiny knife. Now both are gone, just the faintest traces of blue ink remaining in the creases in her skin.

She closes her eyes for a moment and pictures James in a cheap motel room, curtains open so the light of the neon sign can stream across the table where he sits, stripped to the waist, texting her with the room lights off. But maybe that's not it at all. Maybe he's camped out beside the highway, making terrible coffee in a tin can over a fire. Maybe he broke into a closed-up vacation home in the Colorado mountains and he's currently unwinding in some millionaire's bathtub.

Wherever he is, he's awake and alone and drowning, and she's the one he threw a line to. That knowledge grips her heart. 

Steve, on the other hand, hasn't called since she left. She's fairly sure it's not because he's angry -- that doesn't feel right, doesn't feel like him. Most likely, Steve being Steve, it's because he doesn't want her to feel like he's putting chains on her. Or maybe he just doesn't trust himself not to ask her to come back.

Poor Steve. It's hard when people walk away. Or so she has heard. She's rarely experienced it herself; usually she's the one doing the walking.

But this morning she is aware of the presence of a little silver thread unspooling across the ocean, from Brussels to wherever James is, and it doesn't feel like a chain at all.

_Go back to Steve, James,_ she types. _Like you said, he worries._

_Can't yet._

_No? Care to make a deal?_

After a pause: _I won't like this, will I?_

Natasha drinks the last of her coffee. At the other table, the Hydra agent is getting up, getting his kids together, collecting their things. Last chance, she thinks. Last call for murder. She glances back down at her phone and types: _I'll call him if you'll go home._

_It's not that easy. You know that._

_I know,_ she types. _It'll never be. The only question is whether it's worth it to you._

The Hydra agent and his kids are strolling off, the kids' little hands in his bigger ones, down the street in the warm bright sun. James hasn't responded. Natasha finishes her coffee and then picks up her handbag, the gun and injector still safely contained within it, and leaves her cup on the table. She walks to the street and turns in the opposite direction.

She's not sure what she's walking towards; she only knows that she's walking _to_ something, rather than away. Yesterday's Natasha might have felt the steel jaws of a trap closing around her with each step she took. She must have left for a good reason. But today's Natasha has the wind in her straight dark hair, the sun on her back, and feels nothing but free.

**Author's Note:**

> If you're looking for me elsewhere, I'm [on tumblr](http://laylainalaska.tumblr.com) and have a fic announcement tumblr at [sholiofic](http://sholiofic.tumblr.com), though I still spend most of my time on [DW/LJ](http://sholio.dreamwidth.com).


End file.
